


Caesura

by kinosternon



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Dreams, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical swearing, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, alcohol/drug mention, character death mention, did I mention the angst bc this one's a downer, someone help the team's okayest dad please, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 14:49:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8450563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinosternon/pseuds/kinosternon
Summary: Scanlan dreams that one of Vox Machina has died.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My first Critical Role ficlet and it’s…Scanlan Shorthalt angst? Not what I would've expected, but hey, episode 73 left me with Unexpected Feelings. So here, have three heaping spoonfuls of speculation and probably ooc-ness.
> 
> (Apologies for any mistakes—I'm new to this fandom, and this is largely unedited. >_>)

Scanlan dreams that one of Vox Machina has died.

They’ve stumbled their way into a bar. There isn’t a point to any of it anymore—or that’s what it feels like; he knows it shouldn’t be that way forever, that he should believe that, being the oldest and the most knowledgeable even if he’s the least wise—but he’s got them all trained up right; when their hearts are empty, they seek out a public hearth and the company of strangers. (They’re strangers to each other right now, really, so anywhere would do, but this is where their feet have carried them. They just sit elbow to elbow and consume their drinks, and he catches glimpses of their empty eyes.

Keyleth’s eyes are red. She’s drinking with the determination she gets sometimes when the entire world has gone to shit and she knows it—when even she, the ever-wise princess of the air Ashari, sees no recourse but headlong descent into stupor. She should know better, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t even laugh this time; her face is inscrutable, and she’s staring down at the table like she’s talking to it. For all Scanlan knows, she might be.

Vex and Vax aren’t looking to each other; they’re on their own, trying to deal. Vax is nearly invisible in the shadows, but Scanlan can make out the curve of his shoulders against the far wall from long practice. He’s quiet about it, but he’s crying; Scanlan can pick up the hitch of his shoulders, jumping just out of time with the flickering firelight. He’s too lost even to go to Vex, holed up in a corner with his demons.

Vex, for her part, has done a little better at seeking out companionship; Trinket is out, propriety be damned, and she’s buried half in his fur. She isn’t crying right now—not yet, or not anymore, probably both—simply stroking him over and over and breathing in the scent of him. She’s afraid, Scanlan realizes, and hates that he recognizes the feeling. In her head, she must be on the edge of an abyss, her own pain and grief yawning out before her, ready to swallow her. She can’t see the other side, and so she hovers, and tries desperately to absorb her companion’s quiet, regular breaths. Get too close to death, and even breathing starts to feel like lies everyone tells themselves.

Percy is metal and stone, functioning and horribly efficient. It’s not surprising; he’s lost a family before, lost his very self, and took up a new trade while he was at it. He invented horrors, traveled far from home, made a deal with a demon; he may not remember it very well, but he’s done it. He’s most likely to survive out of all of them right now, Scanlan thinks, on sheer, bizarre, stubborn human instinct. But something in him is gone now. It’s only due to his past that this part of him is familiar, and the familiarity is not comforting. Given his way, Scanlan would welcome back the stranger who’d started to show up behind Percy’s eyes when he looked at his sister; the oddly giddy, pink-cheeked man who grinned at ice-covered trees as he told them that Vex was right behind him; the ragged husk, only recently refilled, who laughed at Pike’s lies with surprise at his own levity. As much as Scanlan might wish it otherwise, though, this Percy is the one familiar thing in the room. Maybe the stranger’s gone for good this time.

Grog sits right in the center of them with his ale, bulked up and ready to scare off anyone who might break into their little bubble of gloom. He does…surprisingly well at this, all told. He’s used to the world working in ways he doesn’t understand, but death is one thing he gets, as far as it goes. The body that stops moving, the companions that suddenly become useless with panic and tears, the attempts at revival that eventually stop when nobody can figure out what else to try. He carried the body, because it’s what he does; he reminds them to do the little things, like sleep and eat. He can be forceful about it if need be. (Scanlan can’t see them right now, but he knows some of them are sporting small welts and bruises from Grog’s particular sort of care; none of them are unearned. Grog’s a particularly violent brand of mother hen, but somehow it helps.) Eventually his grief will break, but it will be after the others have settled, when he’s sure not to upset them. Grog understands death, and he understands control, so as not to hurt his friends. He’s coping. But he doesn’t seem to want a voice to break his silence, either, or any company aside from Pike.

Pike sits against his side, stroking absently at one of his arms. She’s got her eyes at half-mast like she’s praying, but her breathing is uneven. Maybe she is praying; Sarenrae’s sent her into fevers before, when she struggled, and she is struggling with this. It was not her fault, because nothing this awful could be laid at Pike’s feet, ever. But of all of them, she’s the only one with the power to pull anyone back from the brink of death, and that did not happen today. It isn’t her fault, and none of them blames her, but even her goddess’s redeeming light cannot vanquish a shadow this black right away.

As for Scanlan, he counts. One, two, three, four, five, six, and Tiberius gone before. There were eight once, but even now there should at least be seven. There aren’t. He’s going to be terrified in the aftermath of every fight they have for months, when his automatic headcount comes one short. It’ll be that way for all of them. (It’ll be the worst for Pike, he knows, with her duties as team healer, but Pike has Sarenrae and her own patience to lean on, and he has neither of those.)

Right now, every face around him is hitting him in a weak spot. It’s a thing that’s widened like a cancerous growth, a path right to his heart, and it hurts with a pain he’d once thought had burned out of him when his mother died. It started around when he met Pike, probably, but he only started to recognize it when he learned about Kaylie. And right now it’s stretched out to all of them, all younger than him and too young for this. It’s knowing that he’s the pint-sized miracle Vox Machina carries in their back pocket, never pulling his own weight but making up for it by cheating the very world of the bad things they’re owed. But lately his luck’s been running out, like it was fueled by his disregard for the precious things in his life, and the more he sees how lucky he is to have them the more that luck turns on him and strikes death blows at what he holds dearest.

The pain isn’t helping to increase that distance; even now, he’s turning each of them over and over in his head, looking for the joke that might bring the shadow of a smile to their faces, of the clever aphorism that might make them blink for a second and halt the flow of tears. Trying to imagine a song that might make it all seem worthwhile, even if only for a moment…but he was never skilled at the sad or noble songs. He’d play anyway, for lack of anything better to do, but every musician’s instinct he has tells him his breath control is shot. So instead he tries to even it out as he counts, fighting to come to terms with this new tempo, this new beat shaved off their collective time.

One, two, three, four, five, six. And that’s all.

He wakes up still counting, and that’s how he figures out what’s wrong. He’d never figured out which of them was gone. They were all grieving, but there was nothing to grieve over if one of them hadn’t died, which they hadn’t because _they were all there_ and anyway, it was a dream. 

It wasn’t real, it wasn’t even _logical_ , and yet he still feels the wound. It pulses with every beat of his heart, like a deathblow he won’t be able to charm or cheat his way out of. He needs to get _over_  it, or this bullshit will give him something to actually cry about. He knows that, but none of the old tricks are working like they used to. It makes him feel old and spent, and there are too many dragons and demons out to get them for him to just take that lying down.

_Damn it_ , he thinks, and hopes that Jarret comes through soon with those fucking drugs.


End file.
